Fast Food Nation - Movie Synopsis & Plot

Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear)-a marketing executive at Mickey's Fast Food Restaurant chain, home of "The Big One"-has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company's best-selling burger. To find out why, he'll have to take a journey to the dark side of the All-American meal.Leaving the cushy confines of the company's Southern California boardroom for the immigrant-staffed slaughterhouses, teeming feedlots and cookie cutter strip malls of Middle America, what Don discovers is a "Fast Food Nation" of consumers who haven't realized it is they who are being consumed by an industry with a seemingly endless appetite for fresh meat.

When it was published in 2001, "Fast Food Nation" quickly became a New York Times bestseller, with its no-holds-barred, non-fiction exploration of "the dark side of the All-American meal." The big screen version "Fast Food Nation" is a dramatic feature penned by "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser and Oscar® nominee Richard Linklater, who also serves as director. Explains Linklater: "The movie is not a documentary, but a character study of the lives behind the facts and figures. I'm more interested in fiction than non-fiction. You get to the point through human storytelling."